Mountains have unique characteristics artists must consider.
For landscape artists, it helps to know the underlying principles behind the shape, such as mountains, before attempting to draw them. Without knowing the underlying principles of this type of scenery, which include perspective, diagonal contours and upper and lower limits of the mountains, you will draw something that looks like jagged pyramids. Once you learn the various aspects of a mountain landscape, you can render it in whatever fashion you like on paper or computer screen.
Instructions
1. Draw the horizontal "peak" lines that represent the tallest peaks of the mountains. Not all of your mountain peaks have to reach this horizontal line. Rather, this peak line contains the tallest of your mountains and keeps them contained.
2. Sketch very light vertical "section lines" that divide your horizontal peak line into six or eight even vertical sections.
3. Draw three darker vertical lines that represent the center of the mountain peaks. Space these vertical lines evenly apart in factors of 1/4, 1/2 or 1. For instance, if you can split your horizontal peak line into eight sections, then draw the center lines at point 1/2 and point 1 and point 2. Such spacing will give you two lines that appear close together and one that appears farther way, but they will also seem evenly spaced because the distance consists of evenly divided distances.
4. Sketch the diagonal outer perimeter shape of the mountains at approximately a 40- to 45-degree angle. You can adjust this angle as necessary, but 40 to 45 degrees will give you initial practice.
5. Sketch the diagonal surface, sediment or striation lines that show the striation of the mountain rock as the earth's forces pushed up from below. These striation lines run parallel with the outer perimeter shape of each mountain.
6. Draw a horizontal "ground" line along the bottom of the mountain base that will set off the mountain base from the flat mountain pasture or valley that will surround the mountain peaks.
7. Sketch intermediate perimeter lines and striation lines that run between the major mountain peaks.
8. Sketch grasses, trees or bush leaves around the right edge or left of your paper or canvass, ensuring the grasses have a length of approximately three quarters of the mountain's outer perimeter lines. Such large grasses or leaves "interrupt" the visual area of the viewer; they create the illusion of bushes near to the viewer and help create the illusion of distance between the viewer and the mountains.
9. Shade the mountains to reflect bare stone or snow peaks.
